Chapter 6 - Knight to Rook Six
The silent Brujah turns the wheel; the low, creeping silhouette of the Docklands Railway Line is brought into focus for a moment in the car's headlights, and then fades back into darkness.
"My sire told me they called this place the Isle of Dogs because dead hounds kept washing up in the marshes," Fellowes murmurs, gazing carelessly out of the window from the front passenger seat. "They never did find out what was tearing their throats out. Just another secret, ne'er to be told..."
The car pulls to a halt. You can make out the glinting glass of one of the new skyscrapers, towering over the squat shadows of the abandoned cargo warehouses.
"Oscar's waiting," Fellowes says. "You want us to hang around up here for you?"
"No," you reply, opening the door. "No, you'd better come with me."
*
You drop down, gingerly, onto the tunnel platform with a clang. Your feet almost slip on the dank metal; Fellowes catches your arm, as respectfully as possible.
"Careful," he says, and glances down towards the rushing, dense grey water below. "You don't want to fall in that."
You gaze down at the current. Something is stirring, in the corner of your mind.
"Something about water," you murmur, half to yourself. "That Malk...what was it she said?"
And as if on cue, you begin to catch the edge of a voice, distant, echoing off the sides of the tunnel. A slurring, inhuman voice, singing out-of-key.
"I come, old friend, from hell tonight,
Across the rotting sea.
Nor the nails of the Cross
Nor the blood of Christ
Can bring you help this eve."
You glance curiously across at Fellowes. He shrugs.
*
You step into the light of the cramped metal chamber.
"Ohhh...did you keep a watch for a dead man's wind?
Did you see the woman with the comb in her hand?
Wailing away on the wall on the strand
As you da-a-a-nced to the Turkish song of the damned!"
Oscar, his naked, boil-coated arms raised in climactic euphoria, finishes his song, and bows to an imaginary audience somewhere in the enormous computer console and mass of tangled cables in front of his comfortable leather chair.
Then he turns. His face contorts into a lunatic grin.
"Pat!" he howls, keeping his arms outstretched. "Never thought I'd say this, but am I fecking glad to see you! And Eddie, as well! Feck me, I was starting to get lonely down here!"
You glance down at the emptied bottles and blood-bags scattered across the floor of the chamber.
"So loneliness reduced you to binging and singing down here, Oscar?" Fellowes asks, from behind you. He's leaning, with studied nonchalance, against the threshold.
Oscar waves a clawed hand at him.
"Agh," he says, "was only my way of keeping the dark away. A fella can get twitchy, down here all by himself, especially when he sees as much scary shit as I do. You've come about your damned man Rannigan, right?"
"You said you'd found something," you prompt.
He nods. The filthy-looking copper piercings attached to his ears jangle.
"That I did," he says, and kicking out with his feet, he spins back around to face the enormous console. His long nails tap a couple of times; and a black screen flashes into muddy colour.
"Right," Oscar mutters to himself as he works. "Right, right, right..." Different street angles, some fuzzier than others, skip past on the screen.
And then, suddenly, the image freezes. A long tunnel; lit up dimly from the roof. A figure stands in the very foreground, caught mid-movement.
"The tunnel at Vauxhall Station," Oscar says. "12.34 p.m. And here's Baron Terence. This is where I caught him. I've been running nearby cameras a little earlier, trying to figure out where he came from - but no joy so far. Right. Let's play and see what the bugger does."
You lean forward. And as the figure turns, as if checking for a tail, its pale face comes into focus. It's Terence Rannigan, no doubt - the same gaunt cheeks, grey hair slicked back.
Terence halts, still staring back the way he came. It's as if he thinks he's seen something, out of shot.
Then, at last, he turns back, and begins to walk again. He becomes smaller and smaller, a bowed silhouette, until he heads right out of the far end of the tunnel.
"What was he looking at?" Fellowes asks.
Oscar holds up a single finger.
"Sssh-sssh-ssh," he says. "Just watch."
You wait.
A minute passes in silence.
And then, at last, something shifts in the corner of the screen. A distortion - a kind of odd blur, so that at first you think something's gone wrong with the camera. But then it occurs to you that what you're seeing is quite different; it's as if the texture of the tunnel itself is altering. As if reality is altering.
The distortion moves. Unhurriedly, filling the space of the tunnel. Following Terence Rannigan. Until it, too, vanishes around the far corner.
"What's that look like to you?" Oscar asks, rewinding and freezing the image. "'Cos that looks to me like something's trying to obfuscate, but can't quite get it right."
"I don't know," you say, gazing at the screen. Something about the shape is unsettling you. "But that doesn't look like any Kindred I've heard of."
Oscar grins. He looks a little nervous.
"Just you hold on," he tells you. "You haven't even seen the worst of it yet. This freaked the fuck out of me when I saw it."
He scrabbles at the keyboard.
"I lost Rannigan," he says, "on Kennington Lane. Didn't show up on any of the cameras. Caught him again, just north of the Oval, 12.41. Now - watch what happens next."
The screen flickers, and changes. An open road, illuminated by the 24-hour glow of the cricket stadium. Rannigan enters the screen from the far left side; a tiny figure, running.
And then a black sedan pulls up in front of him, so fast that he has to stumble to prevent cannonading into it. He backs away, as if to retreat the same way he came. Another man, short, well-built, dressed in a dark leather jacket emerges out of the darkness to halt his progress.
"See him?" Oscar says. "That's Phil 'Old Snarler' Tucson. Remember I told you one of the Prince's enforcers went missing the other night? Well, you're looking at him."
Another man steps out of the driver's seat of the sedan. He's tall, but he carries himself with a slight stoop.
"And that-" Oscar begins.
"...is the second missing enforcer," you reply. "Yes, I think I see where this is going."
The two heavies take hold of Rannigan. He does not resist. They firmly push him into the back of the sedan, and then step in themselves. And then the car pulls away into the night, and out of shot.
"Hang on," Fellowes says. "So the Prince's men kidnapped Rannigan? I don't understand."
Oscar laughs. It's a nervous little laugh.
"Me neither, to be quite fecking honest," he says. "I have been trying to track the sedan - it headed back north towards the river, so I'm combing the footage for it all round the Southbank. Still, I thought you'd probably want to see this soon as poss. Bloody strange, eh?"
You clap him on the shoulder.
"Oscar," you tell him, "bloody bravo. Send me the bill for something expensive with lots of buttons and wires."
That seems to cheer him up.
"And this won't come back to haunt me, will it, Pat?" he asks. "You'll keep my nose out of it, right?"
"Don't worry," you say. "If I should get brutally killed because of this, I'll be sure not to mention you."
"That's the spirit," Oscar says. "And...er...don't get Eddie brutally killed either, he's a good lad. I'll give you a bell once I know where the buggers took him. Good luck, right, an' that?"
*
The car speeds back through the London night. North-west, making for home.
You finish dialing the Home Secretary's number, activate the phone's speakers, and sit back.
Someone picks up.
"Well, it's about bloody time you rang!"
You frown. Not once in your working relationship can you remember Humphrey raising his voice to you - or indeed, speaking with anything other than a slightly cowed respect.
"Is something wrong, Humphrey?" you ask him, as calmly as possible.
You hear him splutter.
"Is something wrong? Have you even, haven't you even seen the news? Have you even seen it?"
"No," you snap, "I haven't seen the news. Humphrey, what the fuck is going on? Is this about Glenville?"
In the front seat, Fellowes, looking perturbed, opens up his laptop.
"I thought you people were supposed to keep all of this quiet," Humphrey wails. "My children watched it on the television this evening. My children! Why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you stop this from happening?"
Fellowes lets out a long, worried hiss. He turns the laptop towards you.
The BBC news-site.
Body On The Southbank Turns To Ash
"Hello?" Humphrey shouts. "Are you still there? Hello?"
"I'm here, Humphrey," you reply. "I'm just looking at it."
You lean in to read it.
A camera filming police officers for the popular reality programme Street Crime UK captured a grisly and surreal discovery this morning at dawn on London's Southbank, when the body of a man in his late 40s appeared to spontaneously combust before their very eyes...
You glance at the accompanying freeze-frame picture; even blurred, slumped against the wheel of what appears to be a black sedan - even with the gruesome wooden stake jammed into his chest, you recognise the face and the dark leather jacket.
Phil 'Old Snarler' Tucson, you think. What are the odds that the other body, washed up against the Thames Barrier is the second of the Prince's two missing enforcers?
"What's going to happen?" Humphrey asks. He sounds pitiful; desperate. "Is all of this going to come out now?"
"No," you say. "They'll write it off as a freak accident - spontaneous combustion. It's happened before. Don't worry, Humphrey - you're quite safe. Go to bed."
A pause. And then he says, more calmly,
"If...if you say so, Patrician. I didn't mean to get upset. And...thank you for dealing with Glenville. Was there, was there something you wanted to speak to me about?"
You hesitate before asking,
"Other than...other than this incident, Humphrey, have you heard anything? Anything strange? Anything...that you might think was related to us?"
A longer silence.
"Uh..." he says, "Um...let me think. Let me think. Well, there were those break-ins at St Anne's at Limehouse, that stunk of...of you know. And those deaths in the Underground beneath the Elephant & Castle...look, can I get back to you? I need some time to clear my head."
"Hang on," you tell him. "I've one more favour to ask of you." You give him Dubrik's number and ask him to track down the address for you. "Do this for me, Humphrey, and we're even on Glenville. All right?"
"Fine," he says, "of course. And...thank you, Patrician. I didn't mean to overreact. Thank you."He hangs up.
Fellowes says, not quite under his breath,
"Somehow I get the feeling this isn't going to end well for anyone."
*
You lean against the balcony of your roof garden. Beyond, the Primrose Hill itself is perpetually lit up by elegant black lampposts. And on the very crest of the hill, you recall, a mere two hundred or so years ago, a group of English kine who knew nothing of Celticism placed a plaque to 'the Celtic spirit'. What was it Karthik said? The dark, forgotten foundations...
Fellowes drains his glass of blood and peers at it.
"This isn't bad stuff," he says.
"If I get out of this in one piece," you murmur, "I'll put you in touch with my supplier."
He chuckles, and gazes out into the night.
"So let's assume that Kirkbeck wanted Rannigan dead," you say aloud. "Or...out of the way, at least. So his two men snatch him in Vauxhall. And the next day, they both turn to ash, and Rannigan is gone."
"But why hide it?" Fellowes asks. "If the Prince was responsible, why invent some cock-and-bull story about Rannigan being kidnapped on your territory?"
You consider it.
"I don't know," you say, at last. "It's...it doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps Kirkbeck's not the culprit - perhaps he's the one being lied to. And then there was that...thing, that shape on Oscar's cameras. As if it was following him. Hell, Fellowes - I don't know what to believe."
Fellowes gives you a sympathetic glance. Reaching inside his waistcoat, he produces a small pistol and offers it to you. Then, rummaging about in his pockets, he locates a small handful of bullets.
"Dum-dums," he says. "Enough stopping power to put a Kindred down for as long as you need to get away. You've killed before, Patrician?" He halts, and then adds, "I mean, with your own hands?"
You weigh the pistol thoughtfully in the palm of your hand.
"Once or twice," you tell him.
He nods.
"Listen," he says, "let's spend a little time practising with this. Fuck knows you're going to need it if you keep digging up trouble like this."
(BOOM! SKILL WITH FIREARMS INCREASED: THANKS TO FELLOWES' CELERITY, YOUR POWERS OF SWIFTNESS AND DEFENCE HAVE ALSO INCREASED)
*
"...I've always found Brujah are the easiest to kill," Fellowes tells you. "Why? Because any good combatant knows to size up his opponents. And about half the time, your tough, wide-shouldered Brujah's going to look at dapper, small fellows like you and I, and think, I don't need to kill him fast. I can have fun with this one. And then you've got all the time you need to slip that hand-grenade into their pocket while they're hitting you before they toss you across the room."
In spite of everything, you smile. And your phone, abandoned on the table, begins to ring.
An unknown number. You hesitate, and then pick up.
"You lost the game, cunt."
"Schiller?" you say.
You can hear the Sheriff chuckling.
"Du Marchais just came in. You'd better start packing up your effects; Prince wants you out of Whitehall. Those were the rules of the game, and you lost. Be glad he doesn't have you staked out to see your last sunrise."
"Wait," you say, running a hand over your face. "Du Marchais says he knows who kidnapped Rannigan? Who?"
"The Sabbat, of course. Who the fuck else would it be? Look, du Marchais got us the name of the den where they're holding him. We're going on a raid. The whole Camarilla's coming together on this one. Full-on assault. If Rannigan's dead, they'll pay in blood a thousand times over. We're meeting in Soho. Back of the Pleasure 'N' Pain, forty-five minutes. Be there."
The line goes dead.
Fuck.
You have enough time to make a phone-call before you have to leave.
A) Attend the Camarilla meeting; bring the evidence of what really happened to Rannigan.
B) Attend the Camarilla meeting; go along with du Marchais' explanation. For now.
C) Head over to the Anarchs with the evidence of what really happened to Rannigan.
D) Attempt to reach the Sabbat with the evidence of what really happened to Rannigan.
